Her goal is the Olympics. so, yes, A2 in her future again.
With Wong bringing in more players for Sand, they won’t extended the indoor team as they did this pas season. Think she wanted to concentrate on indoor.

The sand roster has 19 players listed including 8 from indoors. Newbies Longo, Kastl, Spieler, Mendoza along with Long, Croson, Olevao and a surprise for me Vorster. Thought Uiato was really good last season, guess she wants to concentrate on school and being the best that she can be for spring and her senior year.

Not to surprised either. Believe playing sand volleyball will strengthen her legs, probably will also increase her jump, and quickness. Very smart of her. No downside to playing sand, just alot of upside.

The one player that will never be the best that she can be is Kalei. Splitting time between the two sports is keeping her from reaching the elite of either sport. She’s on a basketball scholie so that makes it real tough to concentrate on volley which I believe is her potential to be in the elite and an AA. Next season she’ll be a junior, and the tough situation is there are no volley scholie available. If she decides to go all out on volley, which I think is her best sport potential wise, she could redshirt next season and get a volley scholie for 2014 and really buckle down in that sport. Just my small take, so take it easy on me.

The roster is already up to 19. There are 8 indoor players that are on the roster. Last sand season was a unique one because Scott had to use more indoor players to fill the roster. This season, Kam, Kawamura, Uiato, Hartong, Goodman, Lelepali, Stauber and Griffy who graduated from the indoor are not playing. I believe the match tournament requirement is fielding 5 twosomes, which are interchangable with the players sitting out, 19 is plenty enough.

I believe the coaches of the schools decides who to send to the A2 tryouts. They are not invited for the first initial tryouts as Hartong was last summer. They pay their own way. After the initial tryouts the coaches at the tryouts decide who to invite as their final 48 players, as Hartong was.

People will still contend that Hawaii plays a soft schedule and will use that to continue to disrespect the team and their body of work throughout a season. Talking heads from other conferences are the biggest troublemakers. They argue that Hawaii doesn’t schedule tougher opponents in the ‘Last 10 matches’ (an NCAA seeding criteria). I’d like to call out these people, since it is their own conference ADs and coaches that REFUSE to play Hawaii mid-season, using travel, cost, and mid-season conference play as excuses.

Dave does a darn good job scheduling power teams at the beginning of the year, but most of these old-geezer Conference commisioners/NCAA Officials forget after the first 3 weeks of the season who beat whom.

Either come to Hawaii mid-season or don’t comment on our weak conference schedule. It’s disrespectful for Power Conference officials from the Big10, Big12, and the SEC to NOT come to Hawaii and then bash our lack of a strong schedule, since they are the ones refusing to allow/permit teams to travel to Hawaii without consequence.

Until that happens, no other conference has any standing to comment on Hawaii’d weak schedule. Period.

I agree with what you have brought to light DonW about the scheduling difficulties midseason. With Pacific leaving and San Diego St and Boise St coming in 2013, Hawaii has no wiggle room to schedule anyone midseason like they did with Notre Dame in 2011. With 9 matches in three tournaments and 20 Big West conference matches, that’s 29 for the year, one more than what they ended up this year with a record of 26-2 before the post. I’m not clear on how many matches UH can schedule for the regular season total.

Might be time for Shoji to schedule a trip east to boost RPI.
Maybe a trip to Florida to play Florida State/Florida/Miami. Plus Jade could play in front of family and friends. Or maybe to Colorado to play Colorado St for Ali Longo ( although CSU wouldn’t help RPI too much)

WF, they aren’t going to travel east. UH already is the most traveled team in the NCAA. One of the reasons Shoji cut out one road trip this year was money. They were supposed to go to CSUN for a single match but ended up adding it to the road trip of the year. Which is why the played 3 matches on that trip.

I don’t really care that they haven’t played an actual match that counts, I just don’t like that John Cook/Big10 uses travel/season/whatever excuse to NOT come to Hawaii, even for a pre-season tourney…

Don, yes,the last time they went to Nebraska was for the NACWA and it was in Omaha. I was there.
My original comment was about non-tournament trip. They went in the middle of the season, played on a Sunday. Nebraska gave them $10,000

honestly I want UH in a tougher conference, like the WCC or the PAC 12 for volleyball (since the men due to lack of teams play in the mpsf with pac 12 schools already.) Only then will UH have any pull with the NCAA.

Need to wait a couple of years to see which conference is indeed stronger. LBSU was hurt big time by injuries, and players leaving. So was a couple of other BWC teams hurt by key injuries. SDSU playing in the BWC should help greatly. Need the other BWC teams to stay away from costly injuries. Also, play strong non-conference schedules.

it’s a known fact that the BCS conferences run the NCAA. If UH was in the PAC12 for volleyball, they will no doubt treated better as long as they keep winning. It will silence the critics regarding a soft schedule and the recruits will find UH more appealing. It’s insane to think you keep doing the same thing hoping for a different outcome. UH in my mind should be building itself into a PAC!@ worthy institution because the writing is on the wall when it comes to the future of Div 1 athletics. The BCS schools will swallow up most of the other schools and the rest will get the crumbs. Wake up UH.

The key word here is BCS, it doesn’t matter if the Big West schools have well improved teams from 2012 season, UH will always have the short end of the stick simply because they’re not in a BCS, period!!! Like money, BCS talks, UH will always be walking.

I kind of agree with you. But for that to happen, a chance to be in the PAC 12, the driving sport for all BCS schools is football. The Warriors will need to tremendous strides in that sport, for the PAC 12 to even consider the Warriors. Until that happens, Hawaii will be relegated to a mid-major conference. And unless the other sports are 2 times as good as just about anybody, then most often then not they will get stepped on, as you say. Women’s Volleyball, Softball, and Baseball, can be quite competitive in that conference. Women’s, and Men’s, Basketball, are making strides to be, so is Women’s Soccer. The only sport holding them back, is football. The main sport that BCS conferences look at.

There are 4 open slots for next year. This is what I am hoping for, to fill those 4 open slots. 1 or 2 SEC teams, or 1 SEC team, and 1 ACC team. Another Big 12 team, and also, another B1G team, either Penn St., Nebraska, or Minnesota. Hopefully, Dave Shoji will be able to talk teams like that to come, and fill out those open slots.

That would be good, an upper level big east team would be good, Louisville ( they return a lot of starters) or Notre dame or maybe even an upper level Missouri Valley team, wichita state or Northern Iowa. Of course if they are willing.

Most, not all, but most teams invited to the 3 tournaments have a Hawaii connection somehow or are close coaching buddies of Dave. Like the past season, Albany, San Diego St, San Francisco, California, and now next season Texas, Arizona, Northwestern, San Diego and UCLA of course. Louisville and Northern Iowa have been mentioned as your choices as preferred but I don’t think there’s any connection there.

Yes I know Louisville was here with the European coach who brought in all the european players, he resigned and this year a new young female coach, whom I don’t think Shoji knows personally. The Wichita coach Chris Lamb is good friends with Shoji. I’m sure there are coaches who don’t know Shoji call him with rewarding his team with a Hawaii vacation in mind.

Cindy, that NACWA Tournament, that I believe ESPN puts on, is it held the weekend before the Wahine’s first tournament? If it is, just wondering if Hawaii will be invited to it, and if they are, will Dave Shoji, except.

The Big West is not a perennially weak conference, only this year due to injuries. After all, Long Beach and UOP won in the past at least two national championships. With 6’6″ Haleigh Hampton healthy again, Long Beach could be a force to reckon with. Don’t take it for granted that UH will have another undefeated Big West Conference season in 2013. As for the three tournaments I see Texas as the biggest threat to an undefeated season altogether.

I am tired of all this complaining about the seeding. If Dave would have went out and beat everybody, then you can complain about seeding. Since the Wahine lost to Washington, you can’t really complain about seeding. Sure you can complain about getting a weaker opponent in the second round, but you would have to have faced a tougher opponent eventually. Just win and that speaks greater than words.
I do think the Wahine played a really good match. Those errors in the fifth set is what did them in.

We shouldn’t be looking at the Wahine’s schedule to boost RPI. What needs to happen is for the rest of the BW teams to win the non conference games. If they win their games, then everybody in the conference will have a higher RPI to begin the conference season.